


Hitchcock

by dandyli0n



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: ? - Freeform, Blood, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Hallucinations, Horror, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Insomnia, M/M, Masturbation, My sense of humor, Psychological Horror, Unreliable Narrator, idk let me know if I forgot something, or are they, past minchan - Freeform, the real horror is the friends we made along the way, tonal shifts for days, yup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 23:02:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30029211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandyli0n/pseuds/dandyli0n
Summary: Chan is alone. Completely alone. It's for his own safety. That way, The Outside can't get to him. His only link to it is Changbin.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Seo Changbin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	Hitchcock

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hello it's 4 am and I never should have written this.
> 
> HELLO THIS WORK INCLUDES SOME NOT GOOD (TM) THEMES SO PLEASE THIS IS YOUR SECOND REMINDER TO READ THE TAGS THERE'S BLOOD THERE'S TALK OF DEATH THERE ARE SOME MINOR DESCRIPTIONS OF INJURIES IT'S NOT A GREAT TIME.
> 
> idk if I have to say this but this work has NOTHING to do with the actual people these characters are named after, I do NOT want anyone to associate them with this work in ANY way but in the fact that a deranged fan of theirs wrote this ok thanks <3

In this prison of his own making, Chan counts the days by the emails that land in his inbox.

Sometimes he wakes up, sometimes he’s been awake the whole time, but every 24 hours he’s alerted to the passing of a day with a low chime, and the familiar habit of clicking over to the client and deleting that day’s email from Felix.

There’s something comforting about it. That little reminder that outside of Chan’s apartment life has gone on without him. Felix still sleeps and lives and thinks of him - even though he never opens the emails to see  _ how _ he’s living,  _ what _ he’s doing,  _ what _ he’s thinking.

On this day, he pauses for a second as his cursor hovers over the delete button.

_ Chan _ , the preview of the email says, clear as day. Not  _ Dear Chan _ , like every single one that came before.

_ Minho is _ ... 

Chan deletes the email.

He gets up from his chair and walks over to the fridge. He forgot to put in the order for groceries again - it’s been getting harder and harder to remember things since he stopped sleeping a couple days ago; but it’s okay. His juice cartons still fill one entire shelf; that should be enough sugar for him to survive off of until the next order came.

For a minute, he stands in front of the fridge and enjoys the cold air coming out of it. He hasn’t opened the windows properly for a few days now either, and the apartment has been getting progressively hotter and stuffier with each day, but the noise from outside always overwhelms him when he tries, so he hasn’t gotten himself to keep even one window open for more than two minutes a day. The cold breeze of the fridge is refreshing.

It’s hard for him to shut the door once he gets his juice carton for the day, but he manages eventually. Maybe today he will open the windows, finally. But not now. Felix’s emails always come around 8 am. The noise is the most bearable between 3 and 4 am. If he gets himself to look at the clock today, maybe he’ll finally open the window. Maybe with some fresh air he will be able to sleep, too.

Chan snorts at himself, then his attention is stolen by a chime from his computer. He opens his juice as he walks over, and attempts to drink while opening his messaging app with only minimum spillage.

**bin**

you up yet?

**me**

haven’t gone to sleep.

**bin**

fuck

chan

srsly?

**me**

did you want anything?

**bin**

tell you good morning but i fucking guess not

**me**

aw, are we at the good morning messages stage? 

that’s cute

are you still in bed?

do you have your cute jammies on?

**bin**

did you just seriously ask me what I’m wearing?

**me**

is that the part you want to focus on?

**bin**

fuck you

Chan smiles to himself and clicks over to his security feed. The camera outside of his door is still broken. All of the ones inside are live. He sighs, and his chatting app chimes again.

**bin**

any news in your hermit life?

**me**

you still haven’t told me what you’re wearing.

**bin**

you’re not as funny as you think you are

**me**

and I’m probably hotter than you think I am.

**bin**

I’ll tell you what I’m wearing if you tell me when you’ve last changed your clothes

He pauses, looks down at the faded t-shirt he has on, at his loose sweatpants and he can’t for the life of him remember how long it’s been.

**me**

let me guess, you’re wearing something pink and you know that I’ll ask for pictures

**bin**

you’re the worst penpal ever chan

**me**

but you woke up and your first thought was to text me good morning?

Changbin leaves him on read.

Chan takes another sip of his juice and leaves the carton on his writing desk as he walks over to his pile of clean clothes and picks out something new. While he’s stripping in his bathroom, preparing to take a shower, he idly wonders if Changbin knew that he’d do this. If he poked at a sore spot to make sure Chan took care of it.

No; that is ridiculous. Changbin doesn’t care that much about Chan. He’s never  _ seen _ Chan, aside from a couple pictures. They’ve never met in person. To Changbin, Chan is  _ entertainment _ , occasionally  _ business _ when he sends him another track to look over.

He hasn’t done that in a while; Chan wonders how Changbin has been doing himself. Is he in a creative slump or something? Maybe he’ll ask him later.

Something clangs and gurgles in the pipes in the wall right next to Chan’s ear. He ignores it, until suddenly the water hitting his face goes from lukewarm to scalding hot.

With a choked scream he backs up and away from the spray, his back hitting the tile painfully. Despite the ache in his face where it got hit with the hot water, he squints his eyes open.

His stomach turns as he comes face to face with a sight he’s all too familiar with - the tub and glass walls of the shower are coated blood, the nauseatingly bright kind like it gushed right out of an artery, but there’s too much of it, so much of it, it’s spraying out of the shower head and onto Chan’s feet, and it’s boiling hot.

He’s choking as he stumbles out of the shower, as he slips and tumbles painfully, his hip throbbing but he ignores it as he runs out of the bathroom and shuts the door. Chan sits on the floor in front of his bathroom door, choking on his breaths, his vision fading in and out as he fights for consciousness. His heart is racing in his chest. Inside the bathroom, he can hear the spray hammering away. Every beat of it makes Chan’s fight to breathe harder and harder to manage.

The noise gets louder and louder, more and more overwhelming, and the rest of reality gets further and further away, until everything narrows to the pounding of Chan’s shower, then goes black.

* * *

He flinches as he regains consciousness, curled up in the fetal position on the floor. The air in the room is still stale and hot, but Chan is shivering nonetheless.

The noise that woke him up, the chime of his messaging app, sounds again, and again, and again.

Chan sits up, his memory hazy and head feeling full. He was on the floor. Naked. What was he…

Another familiar noise makes his heart drop all the way down to his stomach.

The shower. Behind his bathroom door, the shower is still running.

He picks himself up enough to shuffle backwards and away from it, his palms and feet slipping on the hardwood floor. Then he realizes it.

There’s no blood on him.

It’s not just that he’s mostly dry after lying on his floor for god knows how long; he’s clean. There’s no dried blood anywhere he can see. Even when he rubs his face, there are no red flakes coming off; nothing.

Did he… hallucinate the whole thing? Was it just a result of his sleep deprivation?

The thought somehow shakes him almost as much as the incident itself did. He has never hallucinated before - but then, he has also never gone this long without sleep. Usually he forces himself into at least a few hours every two days if he’s doing especially bad.

Maybe he’s getting worse. Maybe even locking himself up here isn’t enough for him to heal.

His messaging app chimes again. It’s like a nail stabbed into Chan’s skull - he feels fragile, and every noise is like a hammer to his brain, his skin tight and tingly, goosebumps raised all over his body, his stomach in knots.

With shaking hands, he crawls over to his desk, grabs his headphones and sits them on his head a little aggressively. He feels calmer as soon as he does so; the weight on them, the feeling of the padding against his face, is a feeling so familiar it feels almost like a hug, the noise cancelling making the horrifying noise coming from the bathroom a little more bearable.

His hand is a little more steady as he reaches up onto the tabletop for his mouse, stays on the floor as he clicks over to his song folder, opens the folder that’s labelled  _ changbin _ and double clicks a file at random. Then he collapses back onto the floor, lying down on his back and closing his eyes as the song slowly fades in.

He’s so fucking tired. For the first time since Changbin has sent him this track to look over, he finally hears the painful edge in his voice as he sings his way through the bridge. He lets it carry him away from his aching body, and falls asleep to the sound of Changbin singing himself out of his heartbreak.

* * *

There are blisters on his feet.

Chan stares, now finally dressed again, sitting on his bed as he stares at his feet, the reddened skin covering them and the little white pockets dotting it. He hugs his knees and barely breathes as he stares.

He knows that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation to this - the water could have come out of the showerhead hot, that could have been true, and he just imagined it was bright red because of his lack of sleep. Simple as that.

Chan stares at his feet and chews on his bottom lip until it splits, then he sucks on it as it bleeds sluggishly.

In his headphones, Changbin’s rough voice sounds over a murky beat, serves as his connection to reality. On his messaging app, there’s about thirteen unanswered messages. He hasn’t checked his email yet.

In his bathroom, the shower is still running.

* * *

At some point they turn his water off. He finds out when he wakes up on the floor again, this time next to his bed, his headphones somehow knocked off his head and on the other side of his shoebox apartment.

It’s quiet. Blissfully quiet.

His whole body protesting, he gets up and walks over to his desk, checks his email. There’s seven emails from Felix. All of them begin with  _ Chan _ . There are multiple emails from his landlord, one more urgent than the other.

Chan deletes them all, then sends his landlord a message of thanks for taking care of the issue.

He walks over to his dresser and pushes it in front of the bathroom door.

* * *

Chan’s groceries arrive. Felix’s emails continue to start with  _ Chan _ . Changbin sends over a new song, along with a selfie.

He’s wearing a pink sweater. It makes Chan smile.

**me**

did you miss me that bad?

**bin**

just wanted you to know that I’m not afraid to wear pink

my masculinity is doing just fine, thanks

**me**

uh-huh

now I really wanna know what you were wearing that you didn’t want to tell me about

**bin**

chan, I know that you’ve got issues and shit but please go get laid

**me**

then come over

**bin**

ha ha

can you get back to me about that song before the weekend?

**me**

I’ll look over it right now

**bin**

no rush

you’ve clearly been busy

Chan’s stomach turns. His skin crawls.

He types out  _ sorry _ , then changes his mind.

**bin**

you know if you need help from someone on the outside, I usually have a couple hours a day to kill.

Something inside him thaws a little.

**me**

why did you dodge my hook up offer just to make your own?

**bin**

I don’t sleep with guys who survive off of pineapple juice and canned beans

**me**

for your information, I ordered frozen pizza too

**bin**

that’s a clever way to ask for a pity fuck, but it won’t work on me

Chan grins. He’s not sure why he’s even doing this - he  _ knows _ this will never lead anywhere; he will never let Changbin into his apartment, even if Changbin by some miracle decides that he wants to see Chan in person. It’s a futile little fight that he enjoys fighting nonetheless.

**me**

what would work on you then?

**bin**

I have a kink for healthy sleeping schedules

**me**

…

**bin**

it especially turns me on when a guy eats his vegetables

beans don’t count as vegetables

**me**

I guess I need to update my order then

**bin**

I guess you do

**me**

if I send you my shopping list and it has tomatoes on it, will you finally send me nudes?

**bin**

you should try it and find out

**me**

you won’t even give me false hope?

ouch.

**bin**

I can do you one better.

Chan doesn’t  _ expect _ the message to come with a photo attached, but it does and he almost chokes on his own spit at the amount of  _ skin _ it shows. It’s taken in front of a mirror, but Changbin’s facing away from it, the photo capturing his shoulder and then the reflection of the wide span of his back, thick with muscle and with a hint of an uneven tan around the neck and arms.

It takes his breath away.

His mind clouds with want and guilt, his guts hot and aching at the same time.

It’s been so fucking long since he’s touched another human being. How long - 20 months? And even then the last bit of contact he got was a hug from Felix before he locked that stupid door behind himself for good. And he  _ wants _ , he  _ craves _ to get to touch  _ someone _ again, at the same time he knows that he’s never going to, and that him even wanting that is fucked up.

He didn’t read a single email from Felix since he’s shut that door. Not a single one.

_ Minho is… _

The line plays in his head over and over again.

Minho is  _ dead _ . Minho is  _ awake _ . Minho is  _ still in a coma _ . Minho is  _ worried about you _ . Minho is  _ not in love with you anymore _ . Minho is  _ a fucking burden _ . Minho is  _ what you’re running from _ . Minho is  _ the only one that you need, the only one that you’ve ever needed _ .

Minho is  _ still Chan’s boyfriend _ .

The doctor could have been wrong. Probably was wrong. Minho is probably out there and he’s glad to never have to look at Chan’s face again.

It was his fault anyway. The whole thing was his fault.

Chan can’t almost  _ kill _ the love of his life and then  _ cheat on him _ .

But he  _ wants to _ ; so bad; he wants to run his hands over Changbin’s back, wants to press his lips into his shoulder to find out if it’s warm from being sun-kissed like that. Wants Changbin’s hands on him, wants to be bruised to remember what he’s done to Minho, wants hot wet breath on his clammy skin and Changbin’s voice that he knows so well by now sighing into his ear.

He’s achingly hard, and his heart throbs in tandem with his dick. It makes him nauseous, but it’s been so long since he was this interested in  _ anything _ below the belt, and he knows he  _ needs this _ , somewhere deep in his gut. He won’t be able to sleep tonight if he doesn’t do  _ something _ .

So he stumbles over to his bed, tugs his shirt off and lays himself down on the comforter. He slips a hand into his sweatpants and takes himself in hand, even the lightest of touches making him tremble, the sensitivity making gentle strokes feel electric, short-circuiting his brain.

Chan squirms; gasps - it’s really been too long. He closes his eyes, tries to make the vague ideas at the back of his mind a little more real. Changbin’s mouth on his. Changbin’s back against Chan’s chest as he pushes into him, his fingers digging into Chan’s arm that’s holding him in place, up close, warm and firm against Chan’s front.

_ Minho’s stuttering sigh. _

Chan shuts his eyes a little tighter. Changbin’s hand on his-

_ Minho’s delicate hands holding Chan’s face, the press of his cupid’s bow against Chan’s own lips. Minho with his mouth hanging open in pleasure. Minho’s voice curling over Chan’s name, his teeth tugging at his bottom lip. _

He pushes his hips into his hand faster. Tears well in his eyes and his throat threatens to close but he keeps going. Gets a little rougher, squeezes a little tighter.

_ Minho’s giggle when Chan was in the mood to manhandle him and pushed him on the bed. The sarcasm on the edge of his voice whenever he indulged Chan in his  _ thing _ for dirty talk. _

At some point he gets almost aggressive, ignores the friction getting painful as he gets lost in his head.

_ Minho’s breathless post-coital ‘I love you’s. _

The message app chimes.

Changbin sitting on Chan’s legs, watching him jerk off to the thought of his dead boyfriend.  _ Minho watching from the corner as Chan fucks Changbin while thinking about him _ . Chan opening his mouth to say Minho’s name, choking on Changbin’s fingers instead.

He’s crying in earnest now, but he still can’t get himself to stop.

One of Changbin’s tracks plays in his mind, as his mind conjures up the image of Minho, motionless on a hospital bed, surrounded by tubes. Of his own hands covered in bright, sticky red. Shiny bent metal and peeled off skin.

The roughness in Changbin’s voice and the softness of Minho’s hair under Chan’s fingers when he petted his hair as he watched him sleep, curled up in a crappy hospital chair.

Minho telling him to slow down. The smell of burnt hair. Fire and smoke and blood on Chan’s hands, between his teeth. Minho’s mouth cut open by a piece of metal. Minho’s beautiful thigh with the skin half torn off.

He comes so hard it sprays all the way onto his throat, and he’s left twitching and sobbing in the aftermath, gasping for breath again, his hands trembling when he brings them up to tug at his own hair, hard enough for it to hurt, hard enough to tug a few strands out. The warm tingle spreads through his body and it makes him sick. What the  _ fuck _ did he just do, what the  _ fuck _ is wrong with him.  _ What the fuck _ .

Curling up into a ball on the bed, Chan cries until he can’t anymore, until he’s numb and empty again. When he eventually sits up, his heart barely has the energy to lurch when he notices the blood on the tips of his fingers.

It’s okay; it’s not Minho’s blood. It’s Chan’s. His scalp burns, but it’s okay.

Minho’s injuries hurt worse than that.

He gets up; the whole room smells like fire and smoke, it’s even more overwhelming than the smell of cum and Chan’s own sweat, the dirty clothes that he has lying around because he can’t go into the bathroom and do his laundry.

Is it 3 am yet? Chan isn’t brave enough to look at his computer to check; Changbin’s messages were still pulled up.

He’d rather deal with the noise.

When he cracks the window open, it’s blessedly silent outside. In the distance, there’s the hum of cars, but it’s far enough for Chan’s brain to handle. Under his window the only sound is the whisper of the river and the wind rushing through the trees.

Chan breathes. His head and eyes hurt, his throat feels dry and swollen, and his scratches seem to burn twice as much in the cool breeze. But he breathes.

He watches a shadow pass by in front of him. A bird, maybe. Just flying by.

Then there’s another, and another, and another.

Then one lands right in front of Chan.

It sits on the windowsill and stares at him. Outside a seemingly endless swarm of birds pass over the river. Unease curls in Chan’s chest, but he feels too exhausted to feel terror anymore.

The birds hops closer, and tilts its head. It’s pitch black and its clever, beady eyes stare at him as if to tell him that they knew what he did. That they knew what that disgusting white smear on his neck meant. What his hands were dirty with.

The bird looked at him as if it still saw the blood all over his hands.

Chan waves his hand at it, but it doesn’t react at all. He makes a loud noise with his mouth, claps his hands and then waves them again, but to no avail.

The bird hops closer again, crosses the window frame. It’s  _ inside _ the apartment now.

Somehow that is the thing that makes him snap, makes the fear that his guilt and disgust with himself have been holding at bay finally grip his heart. Something  _ crossing the threshold _ . Invading his sanctuary. His little safe haven.

When the bird takes flight and traces a graceful circle around the ceiling of Chan’s apartment is when he snaps and the fear is taken over by anger. He takes the nearest thing he can find - a thin book of poems Felix gifted him years ago - and tosses it at the bird, but it doesn’t even scratch him. Without a care, the bird lands on the dresser keeping whatever lies behind Chan’s bathroom door inside.

It feels like an even bigger transgression, and this time when Chan reaches for something to throw and the glass on his nightstand ends up in his hand, he doesn’t even hesitate to throw it. The bird takes flight before it can hit, and it shatters uselessly against the dresser. He shouts in frustration, his voice hoarse from the crying.

The bird lands on the top of his desk chair and chirrups, the sound grating on Chan’s headache. He throws his comforter at it, but it slips away again, flies another circle around the room before landing on a pile of clothes.

Chan stares at it with tears in his eyes.

It stares back. Tilts its head. Chirrups.

He looks briefly outside; there are birds everywhere. On the street light, on the low wall framing the river. In the river. Over the river. All over the bench on the other bank. Shiny black birds.

Choking down a sob, Chan shuffles over to his desk. He picks up his headphones and puts them on. Ignores Changbin’s increasingly frantic questions if he’s okay and attempts to apologize. Opens the folder called  _ changbin _ . Double clicks a random file. Sits on the floor with his face buried in his knees, hugging his legs to his chest.

He hears a chirrup, and then the beat of Changbin’s new song fades in.

Eventually, blissfully, the world fades out.

* * *

Chan wakes up in an ice-cold room. He gets up and closes the window. Uses some bandages he has in his nightstand to cover the scratches on his forearms he didn’t fall asleep with. He stares at the glass on the floor.

He deletes another email from Felix.

* * *

**bin**

did you check out the song?

**me**

yeah. it’s good.

**bin**

not your usual kind of feedback

**me**

slept like shit

**bin**

that sucks

**me**

turn it in the way it is

it’s good enough

**bin**

sure

thanks, chan

* * *

Changbin still messages him everyday. Chan never tells him what happened and their relationship moves on anyway. There are no more photos, but there’s still the useless flirting, Chan begging Changbin to come over, or call.

At this point he’s starting to feel like he means it.

He knows Felix is a single phone call away; he knows it. But he can’t. With Felix comes The Outside and The Outside comes with Minho. And Chan locked himself in here because he couldn’t handle Minho. He still can’t handle Minho; the other night is the perfect example of that.

Chan is useless and Chan is helpless and Chan desperately clings to recordings of Changbin’s voice - it’s the only thing that gets him to sleep anymore. He gets out of bed just so he can check if he hasn’t sent him another sound file.

It’s a pathetic way of living but Chan has given up on living like a human being almost two years ago. He was used to feeling like this, in a way, like he’s just surviving day to day without purpose.

At least now he has something to cling to. Because of a stupid post on some stupid music-related thread on the internet, Chan now has a link to The Outside that doesn’t come with a load of baggage attached to it. He has  _ Changbin _ , who is just  _ Changbin _ .

Changbin, who wears pink sweaters and raps about missing his girlfriend, who lets Chan hit on him every other day and still sends another message the next morning.

Changbin, who keeps asking him if he ate and if he slept, with even more urgency than his usual playful jabs. Chan wonders if something has changed in the way he talks to Changbin. If he can tell, somehow, from the way he types out his responses, that they’ve been written by hands covered in bandages. If he can tell that Chan hasn’t gotten himself to eat for the past few days, irrationally paranoid that he’ll open a can just to find it full of black feathers like he’s in some cheap horror movie.

He wonders how much Changbin knows; how much he’s managed to put together. He wonders what Changbin would do, if he knew.

If he’d ever talk to him again.

**bin**

bought any tomatoes yet?

**me**

are you propositioning me right now?

**bin**

call it morbid curiosity

**me**

what’s morbid about wanting to know if I’m good in bed?

**bin**

forget I asked

* * *

Chan wakes up in hell.

Or as close to it as he can get between the four walls of his apartment. There’s frantic pounding at the door, shouting, and the smell of smoke. Chan is in bed for once, and he curls up tighter in his blankets.

The Outside can fuck off.

His room is uncomfortably hot and humid. He’s sweating. He ignores it.

“ _ Chan! _ ” It sounds like Changbin’s voice. Chan scoffs and buries his nose in his blanket. It’s a hallucination, then. He doesn’t know what it would be caused by at this point, but he’s given up on avoiding them. The one thing he ultimately can’t escape from is his own mind.

And his own mind is desperately beating its fists against the lock door.

“ _ Chan! Chan! Fuck- Chan! _ ”

He can’t sleep like this, so he sits up and rubs at his face. When he blinks his eyes open, the room seems blurry.

Chan coughs half-heartedly. His head spins. The floor feels warm under his feet when he slips them down. He walks over to the fridge, steps on some glass but his head is too hazy for him to register the pain properly.

He takes a carton of juice and sits on the floor heavily as he sips from it.

The screaming and pounding continues, there’s some heavier thuds like someone’s trying to kick it in, but Chan knows he’s made sure that even if there’s a real person out there, they’ll never get in until Chan  _ lets _ them in.

Something like a sob comes from the other side of the door when for a moment the pounding stops. Chan laughs, then starts coughing. The smoke feels thick and heavy in his throat, in his lungs.

The sobbing continues.

Chan’s messaging app chimes.

Confused, he crawls over to the computer, tugs the keyboard into his lap where he stays sitting on the floor.

**bin**

chan

**me**

yeah

**bin**

opesan the fnuncking door

Chan stares. Blinks. His vision goes double for a second and he coughs again. Checks his security cameras. The one outside his apartment is still broken, the ones inside are live.

He laughs until tears spring into his eyes.

**bin**

chan plrease

**me**

s not syou

**bin**

what

**me**

yourre not osutstide

mya brains makeing you aup

**bin**

chan please listen to me

you need to let us in

**me**

us?

“ _ Chan _ .”

There’s another voice outside of the door, and Chan swallows heavily.

**me**

fucks of

neithietr of oyure real

“ _ Chan please, listen to us _ .  _ You need to come out of there _ .”

**me**

no

no

no

fucmiking no

where isn he si he awiuth yu

is he herwe

“ _ Chan, it’s over _ .”

At the back of his mind, Chan knows what words are going to follow, even if he can hardly believe them.

“ _ He’s dead _ .”

**me**

liar

fucking lieying peipce of shit

Chan sobs, the urge to scream only stifled by the incessant coughing.

“ _ There’s nothing to hide from anymore, Chan, it’s over. _ ”

**me**

fuck you kfeliecx

fcukx off

liar fucijgn liar

“ _ Chan please open the door _ .” It’s Changbin again; or what sounds like Changbin. The delusion that sounds like Changbin, surely.

**me**

why

“ _ Because you’re gonna die if you don’t _ .” It’s somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

**me**

id rather die in here

“ _ Thought you wanted to fuck me _ .”

**me**

im taken

“ _ By a dead guy _ .”

**me**

fuccks you

“ _ Come out here and fuck me yourself _ .”

Chan takes the keyboard and smashes it against the leg of the writing desk until it breaks, then hugs his knees and sobs into them.

“ _ Chan _ .”

“Fuck off!” His voice is hoarse and it hurts to talk. His mouth feels full of cotton.

“ _ Chan… _ ” He hears Changbin sigh.

Everything goes quiet, Chan doesn’t even know for how long. He’s gathering the courage to reach for his headphones, to find his escape out of this shit despite his body protesting, but then he hears it.

A melody fading in.

It’s interrupted by a whisper, then another, longer, and then it comes back. A humming melody, vaguely familiar. It melts some of the ache in Chan’s skull, and he shuffles closer to the door to hear it better.

Eventually he recognizes it - a snippet of melody Changbin has sent him before; just a voice clip of him humming on his way home, with the noise of the city in the background.

When Chan listened to it for the first time, it felt like being Outside again. Like walking side by side with a friend while they hummed to themselves carelessly. It felt like fresh air on his skin.

This time it’s interrupted by Changbin singing, and it’s rough from crying but Chan finds that he loves the color it gives his voice. It’s different from the hint of pain in his more personal songs; and it’s different from the roughness that he puts in it deliberately to sound tough; it’s a fragile, broken roughness.

Chan falls in love with it immediately; crawls up to the door completely, leans against it, and it’s almost like he can feel the vibrations of the song go through Changbin into the door and they flow into Chan.

It’s like a balm. Like medicine.

This hallucination was sweeter than the others.

If his sick mind could conjure up moments like this more often, he would almost be glad to be messed up like this.

Unfortunately, the song ends eventually. And he’s left choking in the darkness of his room again.

“ _ Chan _ .”

He only hums in response.

“ _ Please open the door _ .”

“You’re not real.”

“ _ Then I can’t hurt you if you open it _ .”

It… makes sense. Chan chuckles. “It’ll hurt to know you’re not there.”

He hears a snort. “ _ Don’t tell me you caught feelings _ .”

Chan’s heart hurts. “Fuck off.”

“ _ I’ll take you out on a date if you open the door. _ ”

“I have a boyfriend.”

“ _ Then I’ll take both of you out. _ ”

Chan shakes his head. He stares out into the room. It still smells like smoke, and there’s a pool of blood spilling out from under the bathroom door. In the corner, on a pile of clothes, Minho sits with a gummy worm stretched between his teeth and his fingers. He stares at Chan, then bites the end of the worm off and chews thoughtfully.

“Min likes sushi.”

Minho smiles.

“ _ He can have all the sushi he wants _ .”

Minho nods, opens his mouth to stuff the rest of the worm in and blood pours out from his lips. Chan watches, fascinated, as it drips down his chin.

“I think he’ll like you.” When Chan’s eyes flicker down, the meat on Minho’s thigh is exposed. “Are you a good driver?”

“ _ I don’t have a license _ .”

Chan swallows. He stands up on unsteady legs, coughs and leans on the door as his head spins. With all his weight still on the door, he starts working on the locks.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Deadbolt.

Grip the door handle.

Chan opens the door.


End file.
